Thursday, March 6, 2014

Our New Love: Oil Rubbed Bronze

After we saw how great our chandelier turned out, we were hooked on spray paint (it's not what you think). Let's just say we went a little spray paint crazy. No surface in this house is safe. A few months ago, I got some inspiration from my favorite home DIY blog, YHL, on how easy it is to spray paint door knobs. We looked into replacing all of our brass door knobs first, but let me tell you....it requires a lot of cheddar (that's slang for Dollars, for those of you who didn't grow up on the South side of Flower Mound aka Flo Mo). The cheapest interior door knob we found at Lowe's was $9.97 each. Exterior door knobs with locks are even pricier at $21.97 each. We have 15 interior and 3 exterior brass door knobs, so if I do a little mental calculator math, that adds up to a whopping $215.46. HOLY SMOKES that's expensive. Who knew replacing a few door knobs would cost an arm and a leg? Not me. Knowing all this, we definitely wanted to give spray painting them a try. We went to Lowe's and picked up Rustoleum's Paint and Primer in One, for a grand total (with tax) of $14.60 for two cans. We love the look of a dark door knob on a crisp white door so we went with good ole Oil Rubbed Bronze.

We got home and had to youtube 'how to remove a door knob'. Don't laugh. I really don't know what we'd do without youtube. After a simple tutorial, we got all the knobs off, took them to the garage, and sprayed away.

One tip we read before spraying was to put the key inside the exterior
locks before spraying so that the paint didn't clump up inside the lock
mechanism. That worked out really well for us.

They turned out so great! Even better than I would have ever expected. They're smooth and shiny and don't look spray painted at all...or maybe they do and I'm just in spray paint la la land. But who cares, I love them.

It's amazing how changing the look of some door knobs will really update a house. Slowly but surely, we're moving towards a brass-free environment around here. It feels so good.

I did find a chip on one or 2 of the knobs, most likely due to the screw driver scratching it when we had to reinstall them. We could easily remove the door knob again and respray but the chips are tiny and hard to notice so we didn't bother. Other than that, we haven't noticed any issues with the paint rubbing or chipping off in the last few weeks since we sprayed them.

We also had this strange upper lock on our back doors that we absolutely hated when we moved in. I mean, I really appreciate the extra safety precautions and all but they weren't the prettiest things in the world to look at. We considered removing it all together, but didn't want to stare at the remaining nail holes every day. We ended up spraying them too, and I actually don't mind them at all anymore...If anything, it gives the door a little more character.

We also spray painted the latch strike plates. In hindsight, we probably should have just replaced those. It didn't really make a lot of sense spray painting them, considering they rub against the door every time they're opened and therefore rub all the paint off. But we're cheap around here so we'll try and save every penny possible. Lucky for us, these little guys are only $2.27 at Lowe's so we'll probably end up replacing them (or at least the more visible ones when guests come over).

We basically got hooked on ORB....So we didn't stop at door knobs.

These are the built-ins in the study...The wood will eventually get painted or stained, but they're now one step closer to looking more modern and brassless

Guest Bedroom closet knobs.

Is that curtain rod metal you ask? Nope. It's wood. The previous homeowners left this curtain rod along with some patriotic curtains that just weren't doing it for us. So naturally, it had to be painted.

Here's the old rod and curtains in case you were curious george.

So that's that. We love ORB. And our new knobs are amazeballs.

If you're the extra observant type, you noticed in the 2nd to last picture that the laundry room is light blue...More on that in the next post.